


Hearts and Bones

by chewysugar



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Boners, Bottom Spike (BtVS), Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of rough sex, Mild Angst, Morning After, Naked Cuddling, Past Relationship(s), Souled Angel (BtVS), Souled Spike (BtVS)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23432911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: The one time they were intimate was nothing of the kind. This time, though, it's real. This time it actually means something to both of them. And now they don't know what to do.
Relationships: Angel/Spike (BtVS), Angelus/Spike (BtVS)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 129





	Hearts and Bones

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone is staying safe and relatively positive in the midst of all this nonsense!
> 
> I've been on a major Buffy kick (ignoring that which I'd rather not deal with) and I deeply, deeply, deeply wish we'd seen Angel and Spike at least kiss each other. I know James Marsters would have been down for it. But alas.

Angel had never woken up next to a naked and sleeping Spike before. 

Angelus, on the other hand, had done so plenty of times. Hell, he’d done it more times than anyone—aside from squealing fan girls like Fred, Cordy and even Willow--would have ever thought. But back in the nights when the demon within Liam had razed Europe to the dirt, such wake-ups resulted from acts of debauchery involving others. Between Darla and Dru, the Whirlwind had had appetites to shame Lestat. Their trysts were the stuff of Romanesque legend. But they’d always been equal to bloodthirst—no affection, because affection for their kind had been an alien notion. And rarely with each other. If they awoke to the sight of each other naked, it stemmed from having gone to bed in the same space with someone else. 

This, though? It was an entirely different experience.

Angel sat up, the sheets pooling at his waist. Thick canvas covered the windows of an unfamiliar loft, shuttering out the late afternoon sunlight. 

_Right,_ he thought. _We came here to recover._

He gazed at Spike, who slept soundly on his stomach. 

Good God. They’d really spent all night together hadn’t they? Closing his eyes, Angel recalled each touch—each taste. Spike lingered on his tongue like the most potent blood drip. The memory tasted different from any other. The singular time Angelus and William the Bloody had been intimate sans Darla and Drusilla had been nothing short of savagery.

They’d broken furniture, smashed glass and pushed each other to the brink. It had been an act of primitive dominance—the grandsire bringing his young whelp to heel. 

Oh, it had been enjoyable. Thinking about it, even in the gentle afterglow of this, was enough to make Angel hard. But that night had been pornography compared to this...this real, living thing. 

He continued to watch, ignoring the swell of his own arousal. Nights spent observing another taker of his heart had taught him how to best his baser needs. Though he’d been tempted to pump himself dry those nights watching Buffy, to do so would have been too debased—a toe across the boundary between himself as he preferred, and the vile monstrosity he’d once been. 

Spike wasn’t Buffy, though. Nor was he Darla, Drusilla, Faith, Nina or any of the other people he’d ever taken to bed. He should have been ashamed—not out of some narrow-minded notion of sexual identity, but because he and Spike had always been on the more vitriolic side of friendship.

To have it all lead to this?

Angel chuckled despite himself. Pent up adrenaline and a century and some change of knowing each other. Something intangible had crackled between the two of them during the tail end of last night's grueling case. Alone together, history and tension collided to make a perfect atomic blast. 

He remembered them both half-staggering up the stairs to this safehouse. They’d healed from the fight, catching breath and getting bearings. And then the little bleached bastard had to go and bring up “That One Time.” It was probably the presence of the bed that had done it. 

“Think you’re going to get my knickers down and give me a proper sorting, eh?” Spike, leaning against the counter of the en suite kitchen, had cracked that irritating smirk. Divest of his jacket, the muscles beneath his shirt had rippled. If Angelus had been the wolf among the innocent flock, Spike had been the panther—lethal and wiry and always prowling; stopping only long enough to kick the blood from his paws and keep his whiskers nice and neat. 

Angel remembered staring, hard and searching. He remembered _remembering_ —that time they’d fucked each other raw in an abandoned wine cellar. Somehow he’d lost mastery of his control—not that Angelus had ever needed a reason to do something rash and wicked. Fury had had a lot to do with it. He’d ripped William’s clothes, thrown him across a barrel and entered him with one dry, hard thrust. 

“Tighter than a virgin,” he’d said with mad delight at the other’s growls of protest. “Gonna make you my whore after this.” 

But again—that had been a past better left buried. 

Last night had been the complete opposite. 

Instead of destruction, there’d been a sort of flirtation. He’d crossed the floor, pinning Spike to the spot. His eyes had spoken volumes—“you bet your afterlife this is happening.” And from his lips, a sort of challenge. “You really think you could draw me in after all that’s happened between us?”

Spike had curled his lip, but remained resolute. “Consider it decades and decades of foreplay.”

Angel, pinioning Spike to the counter so that air couldn’t pass between them, had matched Spike’s careless egotism strength for strength.

“You only, what? Had me restrained and tortured me with holy water. You only let me carry on destroying the life of the woman we both loved. You’re only an insufferable thorn between my fangs, William. What makes you think I’d ever even want you now?”

He’d smelled Spike’s hesitation. Though the younger had kept his eyes locked with his grandsire, all the cocky ice had melted. His lip trembling like a dry leaf, he’d said, “Oh, nothing major besides _this_...” And he'd grasped Angel, clear through his pants. 

Even now, hours after, it brought a hiss from Angel’s lips. But that touch hadn’t been the thing that had tipped the scales. Like all great and pitiful love stories, it had been a kiss.

Spike hadn’t expected it. He’d thought they were make-believing the Before Time—having a go at being Angelus and William the Bloody. But instead it had been a simple checkmate of lips meeting lips. Angel had made the move, forehead pressed against Spike’s. Spike had tried to dodge, and so had begun a game of will-we won’t-we. They’d laughed, despite their carnal close quarters—despite the heat. 

“Knock it off.” Angel had chuckled. Then he’d taken Spike’s face in both his hands and kissed him like he meant it. Like he loved him. 

And instead of a savage fuck, they’d...well, flowery as the term was, they’d made love. Or something like it. Hours and hours of flesh against flesh. He’d taken Spike several times, always coming back to him when he thought himself sated. Here, in the mellow light of a dying day, he couldn’t hide from the truth. It hadn’t been just a physical thing. Not really. 

With a smile so soft it could have swaddled a kitten, Angel leaned down. He pressed a kiss to Spike’s forehead, and then kicked off the covers. Life would still flux and flow regardless of this, although Angel honestly felt as if it should have stopped for just a moment. 

He stood. 

The mattress creaked. Fabric shuffled. And a moment later he felt a swift swat across his ass. Jumping at the unexpected contact, he looked around. 

Spike, propped on his elbows, smiled. Not the arrogant smirk he used in place of joy, but a genuine smile. 

“Well well well,” he said. “Guess it wasn’t a dream after all. Lucky me, I get to wake up to the best ass in all of undead-dom.”

Angel grinned. “You really think so?”

“Don’t make stroke your ego, big fella. There’s other things I’d rather do that to. And have done.” He frowned, and Angel supposed he, too, was putting the night’s events and years of history into perspective. His face hit the pillow, and his shoulders shook with laughter. “Fuck, did we really do that again?”

“Not again.” Angel retrieved his clothes, and sat back down on the edge of the bed. “The first time wasn’t...that was different, Spike. Last night actually _might_ have meant something.” 

Spike rolled over and sat up. “You keep up with the pretty words like that and I might actually fall in love with you.” 

“God forbid that ever happens,” Angel muttered. Pants pulled on, he hastened to add his shirt to the suit of armor. It had to end—all things good did. This was, he knew, a good thing. But since when had the cold, uncaring Universe ever let Angel the Vampire ever have something—

Spike’s hand closed over his shoulder. Not rough or demanding, but reassuring. Startled, Angel looked back. Here, once more, he saw the soul beneath the veneer. 

“I wouldn’t _hate_ it,” Spike said softly. His poet’s soul—his real soul—shone through. He wanted it, actually wanted it. And staring into those eyes—eyes devoid of malice or disaffection—Angel realized he wanted it as well. 

He traced a finger along Spike‘s jawline. How many times had he broken those bones in an outburst of violence? Even when he’d deserved it, Angel now felt a pang of guilt that things had ever gotten to that point between them. 

“So that’s it,” Angel whispered, lost in the eyes of someone he'd used to hate with every fiber of his being. 

“What’s what?” 

“What she saw in you.”

Spike shook his head. “Banish her from the bedroom, Angel. This has nothing to do with her.” 

“What would it look like though?” Angel let his hand drop. “Me and you? Could you imagine?”

“I have. Usually when the lonelies get too much. Used to think about that time in the cellar. Kind of hard not to, given the work-over you gave me tender little arse.” He sighed, a scowl crossing his face. “But you’re right. This isn’t that. Not by the longest, shottiest shot.”

“No.”

“Well I’d click my little heels together to know just what it was.” 

He was lonely, Angel realized. They’d both been. Two sides of the same coin—two impossibilities: vampires with souls. Two hearts who’d had the same woman; two hearts _broken_ by the same woman. They’d collided again. And maybe they’d stick together in the future. Maybe they’d blister apart. 

“William.” 

Spike flinched at the name, and kept his gaze fixed on the wall. Frowning, Angel crawled onto the bed and grasped Spike by the shoulders. 

“Look at me.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t make me start a war over this, now.”

Angel sighed, but refused to relinquish. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“No.” Something raw snaked into his voice. “No, of course it doesn’t. But it can’t be anything easy, can it? It never can.”

“What are you saying? That you want to be together?”

“Sure. Why not? Could really make heads spin letting the world see that you turned me into a poof.”

Angel glared, and tightened his grip. “Don’t say things like that.”

Spike had the grace to look ashamed. When next his eyes met Angel’s, they brimmed with that something from the night before—that naked need. That affection. He’d had that look at certain points in their history—usually when he wanted to please his de facto big brother with some act of violence. He’d worn it the night Dru had tortured him with the phial of holy water. And he'd even had it the night when Angelus had come back to Sunnydale. It was the look of a man who wanted to believe in something to the point of pain, and it plum-near drove a stake between Angel’s ribs.

All Spike had ever wanted was to be wanted. Whether through his words or his bloody deeds—his need for Buffy, or his search for a place in this maddening world. 

Angel sighed. “Night by night. How’s that? I can’t promise you milkshake dates or long walks through a cemetery, because to tell the truth, I’ve been there, done that, wrote the book and bought the t-shirt. I don’t know what you and I would look like because there never has been a precedent for this before. All I know is I have a nasty habit of ruining things—

“And of choosing petite blondes with mean right hooks.” As if to demonstrate, Spike ran a hand through his hair. “Guess I shouldn’t be all that shocked.” 

“No. And neither should I.”

Spike exhaled. “You mean we’re going to have to make it up as we go along then?”

“That’s about the shape of it.” 

Spike deliberated for a moment. Then he shrugged, grinned, and said, “I can do that.”

Angel smiled a little. Not wide like the sun now setting outside, because he still had no idea what this was. But it was a smile nonetheless. Maybe he could be something close to happy with Spike, even if only for a little while. 

“Two ensouled vampires playing house.” Spike shook his head incredulously. “What do we call this? A happy little accident?”

“No.” Angel kissed him, tasting the heat of his lips. His skin went warm, and hundreds of years of shared history bowed out in favor of the present. Spike leaned into him, groaning into the warmth of Angel’s mouth. They broke apart, and Spike curled against Angel like a cat, head resting against his chest. 

“If it isn’t that,” Spike whispered, “then what was it?”

Fingers threading through Spike’s hair, Angel merely shrugged. “I guess that makes it an inevitability.” 

Spike plucked at the waistband of Angel's jeans. “Do we really have to kit up and face the world?”

“Might be a good idea.”

“Why’s that?”

Angel looked around the loft. “Because we broke into this place and if the owners come back—

“I say let ‘em look. It’d do my self-esteem a world of good for the general public to know you're shagging me.” 

Angel chuckled. Then he pushed Spike back to the mattress. Despite having just slipped into them, he shucked his pants off, and threw the covers back. 

“Well then,” Angel said, arms braced either side of his beautiful madness, “who am I to disappoint the new man in my life?” 

After all, it was only sunset. They had the rest of the night ahead of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> I do so hope you enjoyed! Leaving a kudo and comment would greatly uplift my spirits.


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